Hi,
I rec'd an email announcement for the release ("soon") of HTML Editor 2008 today. I've been evaluating the previous trial version. Does the 2008 Editor do the following?

1. If I select an object in the Visual Editor and then switch back to the HTML Editor, does the cursor track the html code for the object I selected in the Visual Editor? Currently the cursor moves back to the beginning of the HTML code.

2. When switching back and forth between the HTML Editor and the Visual Editor, is the user always prompted to save changes, even if no changes have been made?

Thanks for your time,
Big Al Mintaka

To your #1:
That is not possible at present, but it has been put on the list for a future update.

To your #2:
That is an option under Tools - Preferences - General tab - Miscellaneous.

Big Al,
When switching between the code editor and the visual editor, there WILL be changes made to your code by the program, even if you did not make a change. That is why it prompts you to save any changes you already made.
The visual designer mode "creates" code for you, and probably in a different way than you would have in the cc editor mode. All the hard work you did in editor will and does get changed in visual mode, each time you switch back and forth.

It is not recommended to switch back and forth for that reason. Your code will be overwritten by the visual editor every time. You should use one, or the other, but not both on the same pages.

Try it out to see if I am corect. Make a simple page using the code editor, then switch to visual. Save and then open in code editor and see how different the code looks. The web page may still look the same, but the code used will be different.

Good grief. That sort of thing never happens in Dreamweaver, even way back in version 4. That's probably why cursor tracking between the two views can be done in Dreamweaver in the first place.

As far as "not recommended" goes, the response from Inger indicates that it is a planned update. How they plan to accomplish this if the Visual Editor is making unsolicited code changes ought to be interesting.

In the meantime, I'm stuck. I'd rather not use the HTML editor as is, but Adobe is systematically wrecking Dreamweaver.

As long as we're on this subject, I suggest to the folks at Coffeecup that another good way to win Dreamweaver converts would be to provide some sort of integrated tool for all of these different packages. Some folks just work better with a monolithic program.

Unless there IS an integrated tool and I didn't see it on the downloads page. It's hard for a newcomer to see what's what in that list of programs.

Thanks to Cliff and Inger for their responses, and have a good one!

Big Al Mintaka

Big Al,

When using the 2008 version, you may see a notice like this when switching to the visual site designer mode:

http://www.mainsites.ca/test/warning1.JPG

I think the wording explains it better than I did.
You will be able to turn this warning off by clicking a checkmark inside the box.